Reaper's Stand(73)

“So why would you think they know about you?” he asked. “All the women are under guard. Things are tense, and you don’t even know why. Unless Hayes has been talking to you?”

I shook my head, then realized he wouldn’t be able to see it.

“No, he doesn’t talk about anything important. Not about the club or business or anything. He said a girl at The Line sold them out, but I don’t know the details.”

It was his turn to be silent.

“He give the girl’s name?”

“No,” I whispered.

“So, you’re on your own right now?”

“Yes.”

“Good, I’ve got a new job for you. Do you have a gun?”

“Why on earth would I have a gun?”

“This afternoon you’re going to get one,” he said slowly. “And tonight you’re going to kill Reese Hayes. If you do that for me, I’ll let Jessica go.”

The van swerved. I slammed on the brakes and skidded to the side of the road, wondering if he’d actually said what I thought he said.

No.

Not possible.

“I can’t kill him. I can’t kill anyone,” I babbled. “I don’t even know where I could get a gun—I don’t know how to use one.”

“You have all afternoon,” the man told me, his voice calm and patient. “I’m going to give you an address. You’ll go to your bank and pull out six hundred dollars. Then set your GPS for that address and follow it out there. Someone will meet you, and you’ll buy the gun he offers. You won’t discuss me with him and he won’t say anything to you. If you try to say something, he’ll leave without giving you the gun and Jessica will die. Are we clear?”

My tongue wouldn’t work. I couldn’t kill Reese—I didn’t kill people. Real people didn’t have things like this happen to them.

This couldn’t be happening.

“London, are you paying attention?” he asked me.

“Yes,” I whispered.

“I don’t think you’re taking this seriously enough. Maybe you need some encouragement.”

The phone pinged, and suddenly a video request came through. I stared at it for a second, then closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and hit accept.

Screams filled the air.

Jessica faced me on the screen. A large, muscular hand held her by the hair, which gave me a nasty sense of déjà vu because Reese had held my hair almost exactly the same way last night. Jess wasn’t sitting in anyone’s lap, though.

A second hand flashed through the air, hitting her so hard that she ripped free of her captor and slammed to the ground with a sickening thunk, her head literally bouncing from the impact against the concrete floor. Someone started laughing. The man who’d been holding her opened his fingers, chunks of her hair drifting down across her body. I clutched my side, my vision going dark, and for long seconds I wondered if I’d lose consciousness.


“Jess?” I finally managed to whisper. She didn’t respond. A man kicked her in the stomach, and then I heard some muffled Spanish in the background. Her body jerked, quivering for about ten seconds before falling still again.

Seizure. She used to get them as a child, but I hadn’t seen one in years.

“You need to take her to a hospital. That kind of head trauma can damage the shunt. She’ll die. You can’t let her die!”

The video died, transitioning back to audio only. I raised the phone slowly to my ear, hand shaking so bad I almost dropped it.

“After you kill Hayes, we’ll dump her in front of a hospital,” the man said. “I’ll need proof. Homicide report will do nicely. Call nine one one yourself if you want things to move faster, I have people monitoring the police scanners up there. They’ll tell me when it happens.”

I swallowed. I couldn’t imagine killing anyone, let alone Reese.

But Jessica was dying—hitting the floor that hard would be bad for anyone. But with the shunt her risk was so much higher. One slip, one tear, one tiny blockage … The fluid would start building in her skull and it wouldn’t stop until it squeezed the life out of her brain completely.

It might be happening already—I’d seen the seizure.

I’d do it. I’d shoot Reese, then I’d call the police. Maybe I’d wait for them to get there, or maybe I’d try to get away first. Jessica would need someone to take care of her if they did another surgery …

Pulling up the edge of my shirt, I wiped my face hard to get rid of the tears rolling down my cheeks. Then I grabbed the mirror, tipping it down so I could see how I looked. Red eyes. Nothing I could do about that, and it wasn’t like crying was illegal. I put the van into reverse, then did a three-point turn across the road. I had close to four thousand dollars in the bank. I’d need all of it in cash, if by some miracle I survived the evening, because one thing was for sure.

If the Reapers caught me, I was a dead woman.

When I passed by Puck and the cops, they had him lying face-down on the side of the road, hands behind his back. A second cruiser was just pulling up. Perfect—hopefully it would give me enough time to do what I had to do.

Two hours later I owned a gun.

The man who’d sold it to me wasn’t a gun dealer—he was just a guy in a car with a gun. I met him alone in a field halfway to Bay-view, which I found using the GPS on the smart phone they’d so helpfully provided me. I paid him the money and he’d handed me the weapon, a box of ammunition, and what appeared to be an extra bullet holder. I stared down at them blankly, wondering how the hell I’d even load a gun, let alone shoot it.